3 new and emerging jobs you can get hired for this year

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.

Author: Kate Whiting, Senior Writer, Formative Content

• Companies are recruiting AI prompt engineers to ask generative AI platforms the right questions for the outcome they want.
• It’s just one of a raft of new and emerging job roles across the technology and green energy sectors.
• The World Economic Forum estimates 97 million new jobs will emerge by 2025 to enable humans and machines to work together.

Generative AI is not only generating stories and images – it’s also generating new jobs.

Companies and even a children’s hospital are recruiting for ‘AI prompt engineers’, a new job role that involves coming up with the right questions to put to AI, as experts explained during a session at this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting on AI and White Collar Jobs.

It’s a skill we might all benefit from learning – and it’s one of the 97 million new roles estimated to emerge from the shift in the division of labour between humans and machines, according to data gathered by LinkedIn, Coursera and the Forum in the Future of Jobs Report 2020.

AI and machine learning specialists will be the second most in-demand jobs in 2025. Image: World Economic Forum

AI will generate new ‘jobs of the future’

Prompt engineering is not the only new job on the block in 2023. Here’s what you need to know about it – as well as some other ‘jobs of the future’ that are being recruited for right now.

1. Prompt engineer

“Right now, it would be downright dangerous to use [generative AI programmes] without having a human in the loop, but I think even going forward we are going to develop a new job, the job of prompt engineering,” Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the Digital Economy Lab at Stanford University, told the audience at Davos 2023.

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How is the World Economic Forum ensuring the ethical development of artificial intelligence?

The World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning brings together global stakeholders to accelerate the adoption of transparent and inclusive AI, so the technology can be deployed in a safe, ethical and responsible way.

• The Forum created a toolkit for human resources to promote positive and ethical human-centred use of AI for organizations, workers and society.
• From robotic toys and social media to the classroom and home, AI is part of life. By developing AI standards for children, the Forum is creating actionable guidelines to educate, empower and protect children and youth.
• The Forum is bringing together over 100 companies, governments, civil society organizations and academic institutions in the Global AI Action Alliance to accelerate the adoption of responsible AI in the global public interest.
• The Forum’s Empowering AI Leadership: AI C-Suite Toolkit provides practical tools to help companies better understand the ethical and business impact of their AI investment. The Model AI Governance Framework features responsible practices of leading companies from different sectors that organizations can adopt in a similar manner.
• In partnership with the UK government, the Forum created a set of procurement recommendations designed to unlock public-sector adoption of responsible AI.
• The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Rwanda is promoting the adoption of new technologies in the country, driving innovation on data policy and AI – particularly in healthcare.

Contact us for more information on how to get involved.

“You will all be hearing about it soon. Prompt engineering is the idea that when you work with one of these large language models, you can write different kinds of queries and it turns out that depending how you write the query, you get dramatically different results.

“Even the inventors of these technologies are surprised at some of the things you can get them to do if you ask the question the right way.”

Axios asked ChatGPT to define prompt engineering and it said it was: “critical for generating high-quality outputs from generative AI models, as it can help ensure that the model generates content that is relevant, coherent, and consistent with the desired output.”

2. Remote truck operator

The transport sector desperately needs drivers – with a global shortage of 2.6 million commercial truck drivers, according to transport organization, the IRU.

Europe alone could have a shortage of more than 2 million truck, bus and coach drivers by 2026, due to an ageing driver population, with efforts needed to make the profession more appealing to women and young people.

Operators will control self-driving trucks remotely from a base, meaning more manageable hours, and fewer security concerns.

“We’re looking at one remote operator who could be monitoring 10 vehicles,” Linnéa Kornehed Falck, founder of autonomous freight technology company Einride, told the Forum.

“And this gives an opportunity for drivers to work in another type of set-up so they could be closer to home. It could be more like normal office hours. And it just becomes a completely new type of work. There’s so many benefits to this new type of position.”

3. Wind turbine technician

As countries ramp up action towards emissions reduction targets, a whole raft of new green jobs is likely to emerge.

More than 100,000 clean energy jobs have been announced in the US alone since President Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2023, according to non-profit Climate Power, including in wind power.

It’s estimated a total of 568,800 trained wind technicians will be needed between now and 2026 to construct, install, operate and maintain the growing fleet of global onshore and offshore wind turbines.

Last year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics put the growth rate of wind turbine technicians over the coming decade at 44%, compared to the average growth rate across all occupations at just 5%.